Читать книгу The Hum of the Sun - Kirsten Miller - Страница 12

The following afternoon, her boots remained empty beside the bed. Sun rushed through the broken window, unfiltered. Ash sat on the bed. The weight of Yanela’s eyes pushed against themselves as she forced them open. “Hello, son.” She smiled.

“Hello, Mama.”

“Where’s your brother?”

“Out the back.”

“He’ll run off if you leave him alone too long.”

“No, he won’t. I’ve shut the gate. He can’t get out the yard.”

She reached out, brushed his knee with her hand. “You know I love you the same as him.”

“I know, Ma.” Ash pushed her hand away before it reached the side of his face.

“The same, but different too.” The circles beneath her eyes had deepened to hollow grooves. It was as though a sculptor had entered the room unnoticed, and chiselled her flesh away. “You know that just because he can’t talk doesn’t mean he’s got nothing to say.”

“I know that, Ma.”

“You know he’s stronger than you too, Ash. In many ways.” She put her head back, closed her eyes. “You’ll look after your brother?”

“I . . .”

She put up a hand to prevent him from speaking. “Shhh. Listen for now. Hear me out, okay? You need to get yourselves away from here. There’s too much sickness. I want you two boys to live.”

“You’ll be okay, Ma. You’re tired from looking after Honey. And Zuko was awake all last night; he must have kept you up. You’ll see, you’ll wake up feeling better tomorrow.”

“There’s money in the biscuit tin in the kitchen. Not a lot. Enough to keep Zuko in his Cheerios for a week or two.”

“No, Ma. You’ll need money when you feel well again.”

“I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

“You’ll get better. You’ll see.”

“I don’t think so, Ash.”

“Are your lungs weak?”

A thin smile flitted across her face, though he’d made no joke.

“I can go to town, get you a doctor,” he said.

“And leave your brother alone?”

“I’ll take him with me.”

She closed her eyes as she spoke. “Don’t leave me, Ash. I am scared.”

“You’ll need the money for his education and you’ll need it to look after Zuko for a long while . . .”

She breathed deeply, a rasping sound. “He hasn’t been to school for two years. He’s already eight years old.”

Her breath smelled sweet as her body evaporated. A spider’s web in the corner glistened and winked.

“You’ll look after each other?” she asked.

“I think so, Ma.” Still, he didn’t believe what she was saying.

She stayed silent a long time. He thought she was done talking. He was readying to creep out when she spoke again. “Dominic lives in the city.”

“What?”

“He’s one of those fancy lawyers. In the city.”

The stranger’s face appeared, clear as crystal stone, in Ash’s mind. “Why doesn’t he come here any more?” Ash asked.

“You think you’re a miracle child and he’d give up his swanky life and his three houses and cross his lawyer parents for me and my brood?”

“Why are you telling me this now?”

She looked straight at him, through his eyes. “Because I am going to die.”

The boots on the floor had worked a long time. Ash wondered now if they would ever be filled again. Suddenly he thought of burning them, along with her clothes and the rest of the house, if it was true that she would be gone.

“He . . .”

“What?”

“I don’t need anyone to take care of me. I’m old enough.”

“Zuko’s not. Zuko may never be.” Her eyes were slowly closing.

“I can take care of him. There’s no-one else, anyway.”

“You’ll need some help. You’ll need to work also. You’ll need to sup­port him.”

“Is he . . .”

“What?”

“Does he know?” He looked at the floor and then at the trees out­side. He couldn’t say the stranger’s name. “About Honey?” The wind had already started. It would blow through until tomorrow.

She didn’t answer.

“Can I get you water, Ma?”

Her hands stretched out, too thin, the nails digging like claws into the flesh of his arm. “His name is Rahl,” she said. “Dominic Rahl.”

Ash went out the back of the house to find his brother. Zuko clung to a tyre as it swung back and forth at the end of a thick dusty rope. Ash stood and watched. He might have been a tree for all Zuko seemed to care. Sometimes the child raised two bent fingers into the air as though he was testing the wind, waiting for something to change.